Will Obama become the first US Afro-American president?

Democrat Barack Obama, the only black U.S. senator, launches his 2008 White House run in shadow of building where Abraham Lincoln began his fight to end slavery.

Barack Obama announced his candidacy for the 2008 presidential election in Springfield, Illinois yesterday. The event took place at the Old State Capitol building where Abraham Lincoln delivered his ‘House Divided’ speech in 1858.

He said ‘in the shadow of the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln once called on a divided house to stand together, where common hopes and common dreams still live, I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for president of the United States of America’.

Despite the sub-zero weather, a large crowd of supporters gathered in Springfield, Illinois to watch his announcement. They chanted his name ‘Obama! Obama!’ To respond the cheering crowd, the president candidate stood on the stage with his wife and two daughters, vowing to tackle issues like poor schools, oil dependence and Iraq. He called the Iraq war a ‘tragic mistake’ and the current US politics ‘failure of leadership’.

The announcement follows months of speculation on whether Obama would run in 2008. Speculation intensified in October 2006 when Obama first said he had ‘thought about the possibility’ of running for president, departing from earlier statements that he intended to serve out his six-year Senate term through 2010.

In a video presentation on his Web site, Obama said the kickoff to his campaign would begin "a journey to take our country back and fundamentally change the nature of our politics."

His candidacy has intrigued Democrats looking for a fresh face and sparked waves of publicity and grass roots buzz about the first black presidential candidate seen as having a chance to capture the White House.

If elected, Mr. Obama, 45, will become the first Afro-American president of the United States.

The freshman senator from Illinois however has faced questions and doubts about his relative lack of experience, his policy views on a wide range of issues and on whether the United States is ready to elect a black to the White House.

Barack Obama’s Bibliography

Barack Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4th, 1961. His father, Barack Obama Sr., was born and raised in a small village in Kenya, where he grew up herding goats with his own father, who was a domestic servant to the British.

Barack's mother, Ann Dunham, grew up in small-town Kansas. Her father worked on oilrigs during the Depression, and then signed up for World War II after Pearl Harbor. Her mother went to work on a bomber assembly line, and after the war, they studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through the Federal Housing Program, and moved west to Hawaii.

Obama attended Harvard and Columbia universities and was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. He entered politics in Illinois, where he practiced civil rights law and taught at the University of Chicago Law School.

His first foray into politics came in 1997, when he took his seat in the state Senate, where he served until 2005. He was sworn in as a U.S. senator in 2005.